 Supposedly the Swiss plundered the rich fabrics of the Burgundian nobles and used the scraps to patch their tattered clothes.In reality, images appear of sleeves with a single slashed opening as early as mid-15th century, although the German fashion for "many small all-over slits" may have begun here.Whatever its origin, the fad for multiple slashings spread to German Landsknechts and thence to France, Italy, and England, where it was to remain a potent current in fashionable attire into the mid-17th century.